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My stepdad is commercial pilot and he has all his stuff on his iPad mini. He strapped it to his flight yoke and it syncs to his new Garmin instrument panels. He uses FlightAware for almost everything including flight plans. He has the swanky new update showing clouds and winds at varying elevations. That incredibly awesome to see!
Famous story: Picasso is sketching at a park. A woman walks by, recognizes him, and begs for her portrait. Somehow, he agrees. A few minutes later, he hands her the sketch. She is elated, excited about how wonderfully it captures the very essence of her character, what beautiful work it is, and asks how much she owes him. “5000 francs, madam,” says Picasso. The woman is incredulous, outraged, and asks how that’s even possible given it only took him 5 minutes. Picasso looks up and, without missing a beat, says: “No, madam, it took me my whole life.”
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Yeah, tablets have really changed things up. I don't miss the days of having to carry several large binders of charts and manuals around with me! When I fly recreationally, I use ForeFlight on my work iPad for just about everything. It uses bluetooth to connect to the Cessna's transponder, giving me realtime traffic and weather as well. Impressive stuff - we didn't even dream about having these capabilities when I was learning to fly decades ago.
Just thought of something else the iPad does for me at work - in the old days if I needed to talk to dispatch while in flight we'd have to contact someone on Airinc via a specific VHF frequency to patch us through. It was a bit of a hassle and the quality was never great. Now we have an app on the iPad that'll connect us directly via VoIP and I speak to him/her right through my headset's bluetooth connection. Pretty cool stuff.
I can now do 100% of my full time job on iPadOS--does that count? I've also done several pretty big graphic design and video/photo editing side projects on the iPad Pro, some of which were also for my job.
I actually think iPadOS gets a bum rap in this area. For most users, maybe even most "pro" users, apps like LumaFusion, Affinity Photo/Designer, Pixelmator Pro, etc. have plenty of horsepower and capability for the content they need to create. Maybe they're not quite as fully fleshed out as their Mac counterparts yet, but they get closer and closer all the time, and the features they're missing are usually things needed by only a very small sliver of the user base that will probably always need a Mac rather than an iPad.
But M1 Macs came along right when I was coming to this strange crossroads with the iPad. My workflows in the Apple ecosystem are progressing to the point where the weird aspect ratio and inefficient multitasking in iPadOS is really starting to hold me back. macOS on the M1 feels like a fresh start, and I have switched to that full time again for now. I long for iPadOS to have a feature like Spaces in macOS, where you can just create static desktops and flip back and forth to what you need. Current iPadOS multitasking is too fiddly and weird for me at this point.
I actually think iPadOS gets a bum rap in this area. For most users, maybe even most "pro" users, apps like LumaFusion, Affinity Photo/Designer, Pixelmator Pro, etc. have plenty of horsepower and capability for the content they need to create. Maybe they're not quite as fully fleshed out as their Mac counterparts yet, but they get closer and closer all the time, and the features they're missing are usually things needed by only a very small sliver of the user base that will probably always need a Mac rather than an iPad.
But M1 Macs came along right when I was coming to this strange crossroads with the iPad. My workflows in the Apple ecosystem are progressing to the point where the weird aspect ratio and inefficient multitasking in iPadOS is really starting to hold me back. macOS on the M1 feels like a fresh start, and I have switched to that full time again for now. I long for iPadOS to have a feature like Spaces in macOS, where you can just create static desktops and flip back and forth to what you need. Current iPadOS multitasking is too fiddly and weird for me at this point.
I am a COO and regularly work exclusively on my IPP. My job can be done in a browser now and is great as that means I do not need to rely on stifled apps. Most enterprise apps are now SaaS with cloud storage. My apps are GSuite / Atlassian / Salesforce / HR / Finance (x3) /Comms.
You are probably thinking 'you don't need the Pro for that' but I really like the 4 speakers for meetings, films when traveling, the screen is gorgeous - promotion for general use (and films etc) and I much prefer FaceID as I can have the IPP sitting next to me when working on my Windows PC and just look at it to see notifications.
You are probably thinking 'you don't need the Pro for that' but I really like the 4 speakers for meetings, films when traveling, the screen is gorgeous - promotion for general use (and films etc) and I much prefer FaceID as I can have the IPP sitting next to me when working on my Windows PC and just look at it to see notifications.
XaaS is where I believe most companies are headed in the next decade. Then, we’ll have the inevitable news article titled “Apple was right all along” with web apps (essentially XaaS by another name).
I’m not in the C-suite yet, but even at my level most of our apps have moved to the web. Several years ago we actually eliminated Office licenses except by special request. Most employees only have access to the web app versions.
Oh duh! Sorry, it was ForeFlight he uses. Oops. FlightAware is the tracker app. You probably knew what I meant. Hah.
Yeah that’s awesome having all those sync features. He does a flight plan in the app, then sends it to the Garmin panel and he hits “ok” (or whatever the button is) to make it active, or “delete” to trash it. His panel, or his app, can also revise a flight plan mid-flight without having to trash all the waypoints. Pick the waypoint being changed, edit/remove it, insert a new one midway, then it updates the flight plan. He has the LTE iPad mini and if it’s in LTE service, it updates the FAA, too. Obviously have to be at certain altitude for that.
iPad has been a huge benefit to aviation, indeed!
happy flying!
Pretty tough not to nowadays! Lots of apps are web only (or at least web first with app second and no on prem versions). I can use any device that supports a web browser and be productive within minutes - fire up Chrome - load my profile and my apps/files are there - as they are on any other device.
Most barriers to adopting cloud have been removed, the only companies I know of who do not use cloud first tend to be vast enterprises who want to hold their own data (law firms / consultancies).
I used to be anti cloud (with my infra protection hat on) - now I am fully on board. Nothing like people moaning about something and being able to reply "log a ticket with Google"
I'm a physicist in academia and use my iPad as a laptop replacement. My main "desktop" machine is a 13" MacBook Pro connected to a pair of external displays. But when I (used to) travel my 10.5" 2017 iPad Pro is my main device. I use it to edit and give presentations with Keynote (together with a bluetooth presenter remote), write academic papers (in LaTeX using the Texpad app), analyze data (with custom python code running in the Pythonista app), and access Linux computing clusters over SSH (using the WebSSH app). It works well for all these things and is a lot nicer to carry around than the laptop.
Around the house it’s much more of a consumption device, but I still occasionally use it for work tasks like reading papers and taking notes.
Around the house it’s much more of a consumption device, but I still occasionally use it for work tasks like reading papers and taking notes.
I use mine all the time for work, but it is not my primary work computer. I work at a software company and get to do a little programming and use a MBP for those tasks. For a bunch of other things like email, Teams, Word, Excel and OneNote I use whatever is in front of me (everything stored in the cloud so it doesn't matter what I use).
My iPad is too old for that, unfortunately. I use the Smart Keyboard that was originally released for my model. I actually like typing on it.
All the time.
In fact, it's my default workstation. I have a M1 Mac mini that I power on every now and then but 99% of my work is on the 2020 iPad Pro (just about to be upgraded to a 2021 model).
Why?
50% faster which really will help with my video exports in LumaFusion.
The rest of the time I use it for writing (screenplays), designing RPG content and soon, when Affinity Publisher arrives on the iPad, I'll switch from using Pages to Publisher for layout.
The device is literally how I work.
I use mine to show to present to clients or mark up work papers. Pc to actually do the work. Complimentary device. I wouldn’t really want to do work on one.
My 14 yr old took college online classes this year. iPad great for textbook. MacBook to do class work on. Again. Complimentary.
Does this type work need m1 and mini led? Not really. 12.9” is the real want. M1 and mini led is gravy. The perks. Because consumption is obviously a big part of the experience for any user.
My 14 yr old took college online classes this year. iPad great for textbook. MacBook to do class work on. Again. Complimentary.
Does this type work need m1 and mini led? Not really. 12.9” is the real want. M1 and mini led is gravy. The perks. Because consumption is obviously a big part of the experience for any user.
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Your post is the closest I’ve read to what I do. 2 small businesses, just under 20 employees, plenty of emails daily. I do the spreadsheets and accounting mornings on a Mac mini, which averages about an hour per day. The rest of the day I’m left with iPad and iPhone, where most of it is communication (calls & emails, more recently texts too), and research being 2nd. It’s a living..
I used it for a long time as a second display using AirDisplay at my old job where I only had an iMac with no second display. I should probably use it as sidecar to proof photos with that amazing display on the new 12.9". Back then I mainly used it for chat and email windows. I also used it to dump, quickly edit in Lightroom, and post photos from live events for social media at my old job when my team needed support with that. It wasn't my main job, just occasionally. I used it to take notes in meetings and do thumbnail sketches, I've used it to do wireframe website mockups, and I've used it in a pinch to SSH into the server to fix issues. It's almost always in a support role, not the primary device, but it has been useful when I needed it.
I'm a pilot and I use my 11 inch iPad Pro for everything from flight planning, navigation, situational awareness, in flight weather, charts...the list goes on. Honestly, the iPad is the best tool for pilots. I don't know of any pilot that does not use an iPad